Flinging Rocks at Bureaucrats in a Magical Academy

The Lower Containment Annex sat beneath the older wings of the Synod, accessed through a narrow stairwell hidden behind a tapestry depicting some sort of binding ceremony—specifically, the enshrinement of a runaway aether-forged artifact, judging by the glowing manacles and far too many senior mages involved. It was a dramatic and slightly overcompensating piece of propaganda, which now functioned mostly to hide the most tightly regulated basement on campus.

For those who had no business being there, one needed a Visiting Student Permit of the highest order.

Or, in Severa Montreal’s case, a last name.

The guards stationed at the checkpoint didn’t glance twice when she presented her sigil-stamped documentation. It flared gold along the edge—Montreal House crest, Tier 2 Clearance, direct archival proxy request—and the wardstones parted without so much a murmur.

She stepped through like she belonged there. Which she did.

Fabrisse followed half a minute later, waving his borrowed pass like it might crumble in the light. He had no crest, just a meticulously forged ‘educational observation permit’ registered under the ‘Sanitation & Containment Documentation Fellowship.’ Greg had filled out the paperwork in full, citing interest in containment infrastructure cleanliness metrics.

Greg had helped him out after all. Severa hadn’t asked where he’d gotten it.

The moment Fabrisse passed through the main threshold, the temperature dropped five degrees. His ears tightened from the sudden chill, and it took him three full heartbeats to recalibrate his breath to the cold. Every breath came laced with the faint sharpness of stabilizing wards and old incense residue. The lighting was low, sourced from runes embedded into the basalt walls, and provided no heat whatsoever.

The elites must have some sort of unexplainable obsession with the cold.

Massive reinforced doors lined the hallway ahead, each etched with sealing glyphs and color-coded symbols.

[SYSTEM NOTE: You have entered a Restricted Preservation Wing.]

[WARNING: Passive glyphs may track intent signature. Keep your emotional state stable.]

Detected Attunement Artifact: 1x Stupenstone (Glowing)

Resonance feedback may increase inside chambered zones. Proceed cautiously.

Fabrisse slowed his pace instinctively.

“Don’t lag,” Severa called over her shoulder. Her voice echoed, pin-sharp in the acoustics. “Containment halls aren’t libraries. Don’t gawk like a tourist.”

“I’m not gawking,” Fabrisse whispered. “I’m . . . intellectually curious.”

“Pick up your curiosity and keep pace.”

But the place was too weird to ignore.

One of the doors was slightly ajar, just enough to see a suspended glass sphere floating above a series of concentric casting rings, all humming with quiet menace. The plaque read Chamber Four: Votive Construct (Semi-Sentient).

Fabrisse leaned.

[ARTIFACT CLASSIFICATION: Votive Construct, Type IIB]

Containment Status: Stable

Known Behaviors: Murmuring, Temperature Flux, Mild Religious Judgment

Do not respond to its questions. Do not accept its compliments.

He startled then hurried to catch up.

Around the next bend, they passed a suspended scroll vault locked in a triple-casing of fireglass and alloyed bone. Fabrisse turned slightly to inspect the anchoring runes.

[SYSTEM NOTE: Do not touch the Scroll Vault.]

[ADDITIONAL NOTE: High-Security Scroll Vault (Class V: Veiled Memory Archive)]

Content Status: Obscured | Emotional Imprint: Dense

Proximity Exposure: Moderate benefit to RES development

Warning: Access without clearance may result in recursive memory echoes.

[OPTIONAL PATH MARKER: Archive Reverie Thread – Locked]

Fabrisse leaned closer. The inner scrolls glinted more brightly the more he leaned in.

His RES control was abysmal, according to the glyph. He made a mental note of the existence of this vault, so he could take advantage of it if he ever had the chance.

“Kestovar.” Severa’s voice cut through the reverie like a precision rune chisel.

He flinched upright.

“Stop flirting with the forbidden archives and get moving,” she called over her shoulder. “This isn’t your tragic backstory arc.”

He didn’t rise to it. Not because it didn’t sting, but because arguing with her would’ve only confirmed the narrative she wanted. So he sighed and hurried after her, still glancing once over his shoulder at the vault as if it might whisper something just for him.

It didn’t.

They rounded another corridor and nearly collided with a tall figure dressed in deep violet robes.

Magus Instructant Bellare. Specialist in Binding Theory and Ethic-coded Sealing Protocols. Fabrisse had met him once, and he wasn’t sure if Bellare would recognize him.

Fabrisse’s brain paused like a stalled incantation. He had five half-formed answers and couldn’t choose which one might end in detainment. His hood was already up, and he was ready to trigger every of his Stealth-based skill, but that meant nothing in a hall like this—intent resonance could be tracked, and he was very recognizable when he panicked.

Bellare squinted at Severa. “Miss Montreal. I wasn’t informed of your presence today.”

“I submitted a visitation form to the archive desk this morning,” Severa replied. “It has been signed by House authority, and should be logged in now.”

Bellare nodded, already turning toward a nearby registry rune. Fabrisse began inching backward as if the wall might absorb him.

“And the intern?” Bellare asked, gesturing vaguely toward Fabrisse.

Fabrisse’s mouth went dry. Severa answered before he could.

“He’s a contingent observer for sanitation metrics, apparently. You know how the sub-departments like their niche research.”

Bellare frowned. “Is that the project by Greg J. Johnson?”

Greg has a middle name? He thought.

“The same,” Severa said. “He’s supervising Kestovar for cross-citation purposes. We’re logging containment humidity for threshold glyph decay rates.”

That sounded exactly like something Greg would fabricate. Fabrisse was surprised Severa bothered learning the specifics of the project Greg had submitted. Bellare, mercifully, looked too tired to question it.

“I see,” the magus muttered, then drifted past them with the distracted air of someone already worrying about twelve other anomalies.

Fabrisse exhaled like he’d been holding his lungs hostage.

“I told you to stay quiet,” Severa muttered once Bellare was out of earshot. “And not to walk like you’re one jolt from confessing an unsanctioned summoning.”

Fabrisse didn’t bother to argue as she rolled her eyes and kept walking. He followed.

They rounded another corridor, then paused.

Here, inset into the basalt wall between Chambers Six and Seven, was a mural that did not belong.

A massive relief, arcanically engraved and softly backlit, depicted Thaumarch Muradius in full ceremonial regalia: robes of stratified white and red, a scepter raised in one hand, and the other extended in gentle benediction over a stylized image of the Synod’s crest. Twelve flames encircled him, each one bearing a different magical sigil—one for each sanctioned Path. Behind him, exaggerated rays of light poured from a sun that never rose in any of these subterranean halls.

He looked like a god. Or at least, someone very determined to be mistaken for one.

Fabrisse stopped involuntarily. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” he muttered, barely audible.

Severa resumed walking. “Don’t gawk.”

But he stared anyway, just for a moment longer.

A mural. Of Muradius. In the lower, and SCIENTIFIC, he might add, containment wing of the Synod. As if the man had personally descended into the archives and blessed each door with his mighty, praiseworthy touch.

It was absurd.

Severa turned back to stare at him, and with a very small sigh, he walked.

At last, they came to Chamber Seven.

The door was heavier than the others, rimmed in brushed silver and set with four locking rings. Above it, the glyphwork pulsed with the specific lemony yellow hue of unwelcome curiosity—a warning to those not named in the containment logs.

[SYSTEM ALERT: Containment Vault Identified – Chamber Seven]

Artifact: Stupenstone (Class: Unregistered Sentiment Anchor)

Security Level: Moderate – High

Status: Dormant. Aura suppression active. Emotional trace sealed.

Severa placed her sigil-stamped card into the groove on the wall. The lock clicked. “This is it?”

He nodded. “Yes.”

This was the part where she’d expect something. Justification. Fabrisse braced himself. She wouldn’t have brought him here without a reason. And he’d given her a good one.

He looked at her now and repeated the lie he’d told the night before in the echoing privacy of their study alcove:

“You said you wanted proof,” he’d said. “Of resonance pathways that haven’t been properly classified yet. This stone reacts to the Will of the Origins because it doesn’t fit into the known channels. Not Earth, not Emotion, not even Artifact-level Memory Binding. If I’m right, it might be the first verified instance of a Relational Resonance object—a spellform that responds not to talent, but to history. That’s why it went dormant after the Eidralith touched me. It doesn’t just hold power. It holds who I was before it.” It was the longest he’d said in a long time without stopping for a significant amount of time.

And she had paused. Then smiled.

Because for someone like Severa Montreal, who thrived on prestige and novel findings, the phrase ‘first verified instance’ was worth a thousand permissions.

“You’ll let me study it,” she’d said.

And Fabrisse had lied again. “Of course. If you can dig into it more clearly, maybe you can even reverse the process.” And bind with it after I’ve unbound from it, was what he didn’t say. She must’ve understood as such.

Now, standing at the threshold, he watched as Severa keyed the final rune and the door whispered open.

The temperature dipped a full degree the moment the chamber unsealed, like the room had been cryo-aged with silence, and now it was slowly leaking out.

Inside: a chamber of deep grey stone, circular and lined with containment rings. At the center hovered the Stupenstone, suspended midair inside a containment hex.

This one didn’t glow.

Fabrisse stepped forward. His fingers itched.

[SYSTEM NOTE: You are within 1.4 meters of Source Object. Emotional index rising. Aetheric threads pulsing. Interaction available.]

“Go on,” Severa said behind him. “That’s the reason we’re here, isn’t it?”

She stepped forward slightly, just one quiet step. Her eyes were fixed not on him but the pedestal. A long moment passed.

“Good,” she murmured, so soft it might not have been for him at all. Then, with her usual clarity, she continued, “Don’t lag. Containment sensors sweep every six minutes.”

He reached toward it.

The stone didn’t move.

Instead, the runes etched into the floor flared once, just enough to mark his presence. Then, from the very center of the hex, a pedestal rose: not stone, not wood, but a shaped column of soft, pale light.

It stopped just beneath the Stupenstone, as if offering it a place to rest, or a place to return to. A dais of resonance, built from memory pretending to be matter.

The air around the stone changed. The weight of it pressed into his field of awareness. Maybe it was reaching back.

And somewhere deep inside the System interface, a new prompt appeared.

[QUEST UPDATE: “Weight of the Words Left Unsaid” – Step 3 Unlocked]

Touch the stone. Reclaim what you left behind.

Bonus Objective: Don’t let her see what it really does.

What did that even mean? Emotions weren’t tools. They were fog. He couldn’t reclaim fog.

He chanced a glance at Severa. She was already circling the containment room, scrutinizing the ward lines carved into the flooring, tracing her fingers across rune stabilizers like she was grading them. She’d find something to criticize, no doubt.

Now was his chance.

Fabrisse inhaled. His heartbeat felt enormous, pressing against his ribs like it wanted to punch its way out and handle this itself.

[SKILL ACTIVATED: Liminal Presence Drift (Rank III)]

[Stealth effectiveness increased. Local attention anchors: suppressed.]

[Severa Montreal’s Awareness Level – Divided Focus]

The magic wasn’t verbal, nor did it require intent. Because it wasn’t Thaumaturgy.

He moved.

His steps followed the fractures in the tilework, each one carefully angled to avoid the focal radii of the ward-lines. Not as a spell, but as instinct. His body knew this pattern better than any chant.

Ten paces. Then seven.

The Stupenstone, sealed beneath a shimmer-thin warding dome, rolled like it was orbiting around itself.

[Object recognizes Imprint Signature: Fabrisse Kestovar]

[Resonance building. Latent tether stabilizing.]

[SYSTEM NOTE: Emotional feedback loop forming. Extraction Possible.]

Fabrisse inched closer.

Three steps. Then two.

[SYSTEM NOTE: Concordant resonance: elevated. Action favored by internal field alignment.]

(User consent assumed.)

He reached for it.

And that was when he understood what the glyph meant by ‘what it really does’.